Tagged With wi-fi

You might have trouble getting a decent wi-fi signal in your bedroom, but Microsoft has plans to cover entire countries in strong, fast wireless. A partnership with D-Link to bring the next generation of wireless — they call it Super Wi-Fi — to developing nations is already in early testing.

It's not easy living without WiFi, especially when you're travelling, so when your phone is in range of a steady wireless connection, you probably want to stick with it. Unfortunately, our phones aren't always the best at identifying the strongest WiFi signal, but there are ways to fix this.

Data specialist Mark Rittman wanted to make a cup of morning tea, but found himself in an 11-hour saga trying to get his Wi-Fi tea kettle to work. He documented his struggle on a website that's also struggling, a social network called Twitter.com.

It's been over a year-and-a-half since the GoPro Hero4 Silver and Black were introduced, and we're finally getting our first look at the brand new Hero5. It's still a cute little cube that will record your adventures, so what exactly is new this time? Here's a clear breakdown of the latest action camera in the company's lineup.

If you're living in a house out in the sticks that doesn't have fixed-line internet, or even a house in the city with a terrible ADSL connection — like me — then you have an alternative, provided your download quota requirements aren't too high. D-Link's DWR-921 is a router that you can plug a SIM into and have instant fast 4G access, as long as you're happy to pay Telstra or Optus or Vodafone for mobile data.

We've all struggled with dodgy Wi-Fi at home. It's really hard to find a decent router — even an expensive and powerful one — that can cover every room, nook and cranny of your house with fast and more importantly reliable wireless. That's usually because your router sits in one place, likely near the front of your house where your internet connection is. Netgear's new Orbi router, though, has dedicated Wi-Fi satellites that evenly distribute fast wireless over a dedicated network.

Wi-Fi is one of the most useful and important parts of using a computer and yet it's also one of the most frustrating. If you're plagued by slow speeds, bad reception, and other Wi-Fi issues, here are 10 ways you can power up the Wi-Fi in your home.

That feeling of wanting to smash your smartphone while connected to an over-crowded and impossibly sluggish public Wi-Fi network might soon be gone, as researchers at MIT have come up with a way to boost wireless network speeds by cleverly coordinating multiple routers.

Wi-Fi is one of the most useful and important parts of using a computer and yet it's also one of the most frustrating. If you're plagued by slow speeds, bad reception, and other Wi-Fi issues, here are 10 ways you can power up the Wi-Fi in your home.

Anyone who's ever signed up for a NBN connection or even a regular ADSL line knows how frustrating it is to wait for a tech appointment. But eventually, one day that might be a distant memory. Telstra has just announced plans to release a home modem router early next year that includes integrated 4G as well as a fixed-line connection — cutting what can sometimes be a painful wait for customers to get their home 'net connected.

If you see an especially odd-shaped plane taking off from Sydney Airport this afternoon, don't stress. It's not some secret government project — it's the Honeywell Test Flight, which is in the country for a short while flying short trips across the Tasman to test out in-flight Wi-Fi. The Honeywell jet, which stands out because it has a distinctive pylon just behind the cockpit that can mount a third engine, is testing and demonstrating JetWave high-speed inflight wireless using the same Ka-band satellite technology that powers the NBN.

Qantas is gearing up for the rollout of free in-flight wifi on about 100 domestic aircraft, under a partnership with global broadband services provider ViaSat that will tap into the NBN network.

The new service will feature speeds up to 10 times faster than conventional on-board wi-fi, meaning you can not only stream movies, TV shows, the latest news bulletins and live sports on domestic flights via the internet, but the Qantas Flight Operations and Engineering teams are looking at how they can use inflight connectivity to help with turbulence, maintenance, medical emergencies and connections.

Soon enough, you'll stay connected to your social media even from 40,000 feet as you travel on Australia's national carriers. A few months after Qantas promised free inflight internet via NBN satellite, Virgin has promised similarly zippy inflight Wi-Fi on both domestic and international flights from the middle of next year.

If you're looking to build a new high-speed wired or wireless network for your McMansion or inner-city penthouse apartment, then you're flush with choices — and any modern Wi-Fi routers or modem-router will do a very good job. Routers are getting faster all the time, though, and Linksys has a new range that should be more than enough for even the largest and most technologically-advanced home — including a new router capable of wirelessly broadcasting 20 streams of high quality 4K video simultaneously, at a price $150 cheaper than the competition.

The internet of things is built on tiny, low-power, often wireless sensors that have small and very specific tasks. These devices are usually battery powered, which is convenient at low energy usage levels but which can be an impediment to long-term use when those batteries regularly require replacement. A team of researchers at the Australian National University has accurately modeled how much energy the wireless transfer of information takes from low-power sensors, which is the first step in designing devices that can harvest power from the ambient radio frequency communications in the air around them.

The industry body that certifies devices and chipsets as meeting the Wi-Fi standard — that means they can use the black-and-white 'Wi-Fi' logo, and that those gadgets will be guaranteed to work correctly with the various wireless frequencies and communication methods that exist — has just signed off on a brand new level of performance that's more comprehensive than ever. Expect your future smartphones, laptops and tablets to transfer data wirelessly up to twice as fast, with less interference and congestion and massively improved overall network efficiency.

A record of your progress is a fantastic motivator when you're trying to lose weight, which is probably why Withings' connected scale has been popular enough to warrant a fourth iteration already. But the latest version, now called the Body Cardio, adds an additional metric for measuring the health of your heart as well.

Within the last two years, routers have gone from ugly boxes tucked away in shame to well-designed products, complete with a variety of new technologies and user-friendly interfaces. Led by ambitious Kickstarter projects like Eero, Luma and Starry, routers are having a gadget moment — and that could finally help people realise how important the little box really is.